Brian Kameoka's blog

The Guild - Mucho Grande Burrito (a social media success story)

A couple of weeks ago a fan on Jeff Lewis's Facebook Fan Page asked, "has anyone else seen the Taco Bell training video that Jeff starred in?" Jeff replied that he was "speechless" as the video was probably ten years old.  According to Robert (the fan), he worked at Taco Bell at one point and thought this video was hilarious so he asked his manager if he could have the extra copy that had been sent to his store.  This was long before there was a web series called The Guild or a character named Vork.  Unfortunately, Robert had no way to convert & upload this gem from VHS.  So I messaged him and said "hey, I do have a way to convert & upload - if you send it to me I'll get it up on YouTube and mail it back to you."  So, through the magic of an Elgato Video Capture Device, social networking, a super cool fan of The Guild, this brilliant gem can now be shared.

I know that social media has made it's mark on global politics, changed the way we communicate, and done things like help an independent show like The Guild reach new audiences daily.  But it also helps unearth such rare gems like this Mucho Grande Burrito video.  Remember, it is by far the largest burrito on our menu:

YouTube Decides for You: Always Show Captions

One of my duties as marketing coordinator for The Guild is to manage the show's YouTube channel.  On Friday I uploaded the first episode of Season 3 and added the English and Portuguese subtitles.  Everything seemed to go smoothly, but I noticed that the English subtitles seemed to be on by default, and I wondered if I had configured something wrong on the video or channel.  After some investigating, I discovered that this is not configured at the channel level, but at the individual user (viewer) level.

What's worse is it appears that YouTube has decided to default all users to "always show captions" as part of the new implementation of auto captions announced here. (link to YouTube blog post).

So, quick user tip, here's how to turn this off* (with screen shot below):

1. While logged in to your YouTube account, go to "account" (under your username)
2. In "Account Settings" scroll down to "Playback Setup"
3. Under "Captions" uncheck the "Always Show Captions" option
4. Hit the "Save Changes" button at the bottom

 

While this may only be a minor annoyance to the individual user, this decision by YouTube really affects content creators who are already using captioning.  The Guild has a large international following plus a significant number of deaf or hard of hearing fans who rely on the subtitles.  YouTube is great for sharing a show like The Guild worldwide, and because of the hard work of a lot of dedicated fan volunteers, the show is available subtitled in many languages.

However, the decision to set captions on by default without announcing it is effectively blindsiding users and content creators with a change in functionality.  While I applaud YouTube for having easy to use captioning capability, and believe the auto-captioning is a really cool development, this poor decision has made captions a sore subject and will potentially annoy many users.  The Guild has over 170,000 subscribers on its channel and we're now fielding tons of "why did you turn captions on?!" complaints in comments.  What's worse is that if a user is not logged in, the default is also to run captions.

Not cool, YouTube.  It would have helped if you had given users a heads up to this.

* Note that as of writing, I've turned this off on my personal account yet YouTube is still serving captions to me.

And, shout out & thanks to @worldofhiglet and @osiramon for replying to me on twitter when I first was trying to figure this out, and to @maxsummers, The Guild's translation coordinator.  Also, the amazing and brilliant Gina Trapani mentioned this issue on TWiG (I had emailed her suggesting this as a possible tip of the week).

The Guild as a Community

First, in case you didn't see it, Kim posted a really interesting comment on my first blog post that fills in some of the detail behind the scenes on the genesis of the show and it's transformation from sitcom pilot to web series (along with lots of other stuff such as my original tweet that got her thinking of hiring me).

One of the really striking things about coming on board with The Guild is the sense of community that surrounds it.  The photo here is one of my favorite pictures from Comic-Con, featuring a bunch of the fans I met there (there are 4 countries and 3 continents represented in that pic, btw).  This community vibe comes from combination of factors, in my estimation... first, the show is good and people like to support it.  It's independent, and it was really built by Felicia spending hours upon hours on various fan websites (Buffy and other Whedon-related sites) asking for support.  The fact that most of Season One was fan-funded made scores of people invested (literally) in the show.  Working on the social media part of The Guild's marketing has been an interesting ride.  Where most companies big and small are playing catchup with the social media world, The Guild has been out in front for two key reasons - social media is affordable (and thus the only marketing that the show can really afford), and Felicia herself is an early adopter of such technologies.  And while the companies playing catchup are entering social media to engage their customers and audiences, The Guild is doing that but also using it to keep the dialogue open with the already engaged fanbase.

There are so many great examples of how The Guild has emerged as community, but I'm going to highlight two that I really love.  First, there is the Knights of the Guild podcast, hosted by Kenny and Jenni (pictured right with Felicia during their recent one year anniversary podcast).  The show is produced from the rare and unique perspective of hosts who are both fans of the show and insiders, as both have worked on The Guild.  Kenny is one of the most passionate geeks I've met and does clever things that make me grin, like using the conceit of broadcasting each episode from a location in the fictitious world of The Guild, complete with background sound effects.  Kenny's personality is also very organized and thorough, which plays in hilarious opposition to Jenni who has boundless energy and is constantly ad libbing little quips and jokes.  On the podcast she reminds me of a little kid who gets to goof off into a mic unfiltered, and doesn't care who's listening.

The second example is what I'll call Guild Chat, which is technically the "forums" or "community" built in to the Guild's website and powered by Ning (a platform for creating your own social network).  People can create their own profiles, blog, create forums and more on the Guild's site.  And there's a live chat room too which has it's regulars.  One of my personal favorite memories of the rollout of Season 3 was that I often hung out in Guild Chat with other fans as we awaited the new episodes to be posted Monday nights just after midnight.  There are tons of examples of impressive community goodwill from Guild Chat, such as a group of fans who scrambled to post transcripts of each episode that came out for deaf fans.  And the cast and crew of this show interact with the fans quite a bit - I remember for the finale of Season 3 there were several cast and crew in Guild chat and everyone was tweeting about it, there were 100 people in the chat room, if I remember right.  Check out Guild Chat yourself - see my badge below.

Visit Watch The Guild

What is The Guild?

Yesterday I blogged that it was one year since my affiliation with The Guild began.  I thought I'd back up and give you an introduction to The Guild, and start with the simple question "What is The Guild?"  Sure you could go to Wikipedia or The Guild's website, but here are my words on the subject...

What is "The Guild?"

The Guild is a comedy web series about six online gamers, created by Felicia Day, who writes, produces and stars in the show.

What is a "web series?"

A web series is a TV show, but on the internet.  In the case of The Guild, it's like a sitcom.  Think "Friends" but shorter form (four to eight minute episodes).  In fact, Kim Evey (who produces The Guild with Felicia) has called The Guild as "'Friends' but with gamers" and I think that's apt.

There are now lots of web series out there.  Sometimes web series (or webisodes) are extensions of traditional television shows, like "LOST: Missing Pieces" or "Battlestar Galactica: The Face of the Enemy" but there are a bunch of great web series being produced independently that are standalone series.  There are two websites that are great starting points to learn about these many web series, NewTeeVee and Tubefilter.  You can also search Twitter every Wednesday to look for web series suggestions from Twitter users.  The first web series I saw was Kim Evey's hilarious Gorgeous Tiny Chicken Machine show, which you can see here.

How did "The Guild" come about?